Cancer is one of the most deadly threats to human health. In the U.S. alone, cancer affects nearly 1.3 million new patients each year, and is the second leading cause of death after cardiovascular disease, accounting for approximately 1 in 4 deaths. Solid tumors are responsible for most of those deaths. Although there have been significant advances in the medical treatment of certain cancers, the overall 5-year survival rate for all cancers has improved only by about 10% in the past 20 years. Cancers, or malignant tumors, metastasize and grow rapidly in an uncontrolled manner, making treatment extremely difficult.
Mesothelin is a 40 kDa glycosylphosphatidyl inositol-linked membrane glycoprotein whose expression in normal individuals is restricted to the mesothelial cells lining pleura, peritoneum and pericardium. By contrast, mesothelin is overexpressed by a number of solid tumors, including malignant mesothelioma, ovarian, stomach, lung, and pancreatic adenocarcinoma, as well as bile duct carcinoma and triple negative breast cancer (Ordonez N G, Am J Surg Pathol 1993; 27:1418-28., Hassan R, Laszik Z G, Lerner M, Raffeld M, Postier R, Brackett D. Am J Clin Pathol 2005; 124:838-45; Chou J, et al. Breast Cancer Res Treat 2012; 133:799-804). The biological function of mesothelin is still unclear; however mesothelin binds to CA125, a plasma glycoprotein on tumor cells, suggesting that mesothelin may contribute to peritoneal and pleural metastasis (Kaneko, et al., 2009, J Biol Chem 284: 3739-3749; Rump, et al., 2004, J Biol Chem 279: 9190-9198). Mesothelin expression is associated with chemoresistance, shorter disease-free survival and worse overall survival of patients with epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) (Cheng, et al., 2009, Br J Cancer 100: 1144-1153). Accordingly, mesothelin represents an attractive target for immune-based therapies. Based on frequency of tumor expression, primary targets of anti-mesothelin therapy are mesotheliomas and pancreatic adenocarcinomas (close to 100% tumors express antigen), followed by ovarian cancers (67-100% tumors express antigen) and lung adenocarcinomas (41-53% are mesothelin positive), reviewed in Raffit Hassan, Mitchell Ho. Eur J Cancer. 2008 January; 44(1): 46-53. First cancer therapeutic antibody targeting mesothelin, K1, was derived from a mouse hybridoma [Chang K, Pastan I, Willingham M C. Int J Cancer 1992; 50:373-81]. Subsequently, a greater affinity anti-mesothelin antibody termed SS1 was developed by phage display and hot spot mutagenesis [Chowdhury P S, Viner J L, Beers R, Pastan I. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 1998; 95:669-74; Chowdhury P S, Pastan I, Nat Biotech 1999; 17:568-72].
Chimeric Antigen Receptors (CARs) are hybrid molecules comprising three essential units: (1) an extracellular antigen-binding motif, (2) linking/transmembrane motifs, and (3) intracellular T-cell signaling motifs (Long A H, Haso W M, Orentas R J. Lessons learned from a highly-active CD22-specific chimeric antigen receptor. Oncoimmunology. 2013; 2 (4):e23621). The antigen-binding motif of a CAR is commonly fashioned after an single chain Fragment variable (scFv), the minimal binding domain of an immunoglobulin (Ig) molecule. Alternate antigen-binding motifs, such as receptor ligands (i.e., IL-13 has been engineered to bind tumor expressed IL-13 receptor), intact immune receptors, library-derived peptides, and innate immune system effector molecules (such as NKG2D) also have been engineered. Alternate cell targets for CAR expression (such as NK or gamma-delta T cells) are also under development (Brown C E et al Clin Cancer Res. 2012; 18(8):2199-209; Lehner M et al. PLoS One. 2012; 7 (2):e31210). There remains significant work with regard to defining the most active T-cell population to transduce with CAR vectors, determining the optimal culture and expansion techniques, and defining the molecular details of the CAR protein structure itself.
The linking motifs of a CAR can be a relatively stable structural domain, such as the constant domain of IgG, or designed to be an extended flexible linker. Structural motifs, such as those derived from IgG constant domains, can be used to extend the scFv binding domain away from the T-cell plasma membrane surface. This may be important for some tumor targets where the binding domain is particularly close to the tumor cell surface membrane (such as for the disialoganglioside GD2; Orentas et al., unpublished observations). To date, the signaling motifs used in CARs always include the CD3-ζ chain because this core motif is the key signal for T cell activation. The first reported second-generation CARs featured CD28 signaling domains and the CD28 transmembrane sequence. This motif was used in third-generation CARs containing CD137 (4-1BB) signaling motifs as well (Zhao Y et al J Immunol. 2009; 183 (9): 5563-74). With the advent of new technology, the activation of T cells with beads linked to anti-CD3 and anti-CD28 antibody, and the presence of the canonical “signal 2” from CD28 was no longer required to be encoded by the CAR itself. Using bead activation, third-generation vectors were found to be not superior to second-generation vectors in in vitro assays, and they provided no clear benefit over second-generation vectors in mouse models of leukemia (Haso W, Lee D W, Shah N N, Stetler-Stevenson M, Yuan C M, Pastan I H, Dimitrov D S, Morgan R A, FitzGerald D J, Barrett D M, Wayne A S, Mackall C L, Orentas R J. Anti-CD22-chimeric antigen receptors targeting B cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia, Blood. 2013; 121 (7):1165-74; Kochenderfer J N et al. Blood. 2012; 119 (12):2709-20). This is borne out by the clinical success of CD19-specific CARS that are in a second generation CD28/CD3-ζ (Lee D W et al. American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting. New Orleans, La.; Dec. 7-10, 2013) and a CD137/CD3-signaling format (Porter D L et al. N Engl J Med. 2011; 365 (8): 725-33). In addition to CD137, other tumor necrosis factor receptor superfamily members such as OX40 also are able to provide important persistence signals in CAR-transduced T cells (Yvon E et al. Clin Cancer Res. 2009; 15(18):5852-60). Equally important are the culture conditions under which the CAR T-cell populations were cultured.
Current challenges in the more widespread and effective adaptation of CAR therapy for cancer relate to a paucity of compelling targets. Creating binders to cell surface antigens is now readily achievable, but discovering a cell surface antigen that is specific for tumor while sparing normal tissues remains a formidable challenge. One potential way to imbue greater target cell specificity to CAR-expressing T cells is to use combinatorial CAR approaches. In one system, the CD3-ζ and CD28 signal units are split between two different CAR constructs expressed in the same cell; in another, two CARs are expressed in the same T cell, but one has a lower affinity and thus requires the alternate CAR to be engaged first for full activity of the second (Lanitis E et al. Cancer Immunol Res. 2013; 1(1):43-53; Kloss C C et al. Nat Biotechnol. 2013; 31(1):71-5). A second challenge for the generation of a single scFv-based CAR as an immunotherapeutic agent is tumor cell heterogeneity. At least one group has developed a CAR strategy for glioblastoma whereby the effector cell population targets multiple antigens (HER2, IL-13Ra, EphA2) at the same time in the hope of avoiding the outgrowth of target antigen-negative populations. (Hegde M et al. Mol Ther. 2013; 21(11):2087-101).
T-cell-based immunotherapy has become a new frontier in synthetic biology; multiple promoters and gene products are envisioned to steer these highly potent cells to the tumor microenvironment, where T cells can both evade negative regulatory signals and mediate effective tumor killing. The elimination of unwanted T cells through the drug-induced dimerization of inducible caspase 9 constructs with AP1903 demonstrates one way in which a powerful switch that can control T-cell populations can be initiated pharmacologically (Di Stasi A et al. N Engl J Med. 2011; 365(18):1673-83). The creation of effector T-cell populations that are immune to the negative regulatory effects of transforming growth factor-β by the expression of a decoy receptor further demonstrates that degree to which effector T cells can be engineered for optimal antitumor activity (Foster A E et al. J Immunother. 2008; 31(5):500-5).
Thus, while it appears that CARs can trigger T-cell activation in a manner similar to an endogenous T-cell receptor, a major impediment to the clinical application of this technology to date has been limited in vivo expansion of CAR+ T cells, rapid disappearance of the cells after infusion, and disappointing clinical activity. Although several attempts to target mesothelin-positive tumors have been made by other groups, including recent work that has shown that human T cells bearing an anti-human mesothelin CAR of mouse origin (referred to as SS1) exhibit MHC-independent effector functions in vitro and induce the regression of human mesothelioma xenografts in vivo in immunodeficient mice (Carpenito, et al., 2009, Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 106: 3360-3365), a number of challenges to this approach became apparent, including toxicity to by-stander cells, lack of efficacy, or the need for localized tumor delivery. Accordingly, there is an urgent and long felt need in the art for discovering compositions and methods for treatment of cancer using CARs that can exhibit intended therapeutic attributes without the aforementioned short comings.
The present invention addresses these needs by providing CAR compositions and therapeutic methods that can be used to treat cancers and other diseases and/or conditions. In particular, the present invention as disclosed and described herein provides CARs that may be used the treatment of diseases, disorders or conditions associated with dysregulated expression of mesothelin and which CARS contain mesothelin antigen binding domains that exhibit a high surface expression on transduced T cells, exhibit a high degree of cytolysis and transduced T cell in vivo expansion and persistence.